Letters to the Editor
XOXO
Published Letters: 31 Editor's Choice: 3
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Tough choice
[Read the article: Should I confront my father about his affair?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It can be so disorienting, to learn something about one's parents. Or about anyone one thinks one knows. My father confided one of his infidelities to me. That was many years ago, when I was fourteen. He didn't like the way my step-mother smelled. She didn't smell "natural." This other woman smelled better. Over thirty years ago. She is still my step-mother. I don't snoop because I really, really prefer not to know the lengths these people go to, to make their lives livable. There's too much information just floating on the surface. My stepmother confided in me as well, but thankfully not about her relationships outside the marriage. She had one affair that lasted a few years, that I know about. It was obvious. The two of them have some sort of pact, whether spoken or unspoken. A marriage. It is between them. My stepmother has a slightly greater capacity for joy than my father, which is perhaps why he chose her, the smell not-withstanding. I sincerely wish her luck with that capacity. I couldn't walk a mile in my father's moccasins. I couldn't take two steps, but he's been walking his road for seventy years. Sometimes you just have to be a witness. You read an email. You pull a book off the shelf and see the secret bottle of sherry. You show up for a holiday meal. Whatever. My father has a lot of secrets. I have accidentally discovered a number of them, and so I know him with more detail than I otherwise would. But not differently. These are distasteful, petty secrets, things he's done which keep him from actually having the kind of character I believe he would like to have, the one he tries to present. It has been very educational, having this man as a father. The man my step-mother is married to is not the man I know. Everyone prefers it that way.
All of the above could constitute an argument in favor of the LW talking to her father and/or her mother immediately, or not at all. But really, it's no argument at all. Different families have different ways. It will probably make a more dramatic story if she does talk. I enjoy hearing dramatic stories, but I don't like being in them. Unless it's necessary. And even then, I don't like it, so I set a pretty high bar for "necessary." It's a tough choice for the LW.
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Hold on a second,
[Read the article: The superheroes of "Sex and the City"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I like the super-hero comparison. For those in the thread arguing that the comparison fails because these women aren't fighting evil, I think that you are working with a too-limited understanding of evil. The boy-heros' villains are impossibly silly, almost without exception. Sandman? The Joker? Lex Luthor? C'mon. The real evils being fought in those movies are the goblins of unimportance, boredom, and impotence. Am I right? You know it. And the boy-heroes succeed valiantly, against all odds. Hooray. Just because the girls aren't pretending the world has a binary good/evil moral structure does not suggest that their characters are deficient compared to those of the boys. Rather the opposite. They are fighting the hideous specters of unimportance, boredom and impotence every bit as valiantly as any guy in tights. And they get to have sex that isn't sublimated. Will Spidey ever gain that power? No. He'll fight an arch-villain in a mask any day of the week, but like most of the rest he's scared silly of sex and intimacy. Touche'?
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fightthetheocracy
[Read the article: The superheroes of "Sex and the City"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My apologies. I didn't mean to slight the comics. I was just thinking about the movies. That's the limit of my familiarity. And I haven't seen all of them. I wouldn't want my flippant observations about any film to be taken as an attempt to criticize the literary material that inspired it, whether that material was graphic, or straight prose. I'm hoping you'll grant the distinction? I'm sorry to hear that Spiderman's editor erased his marriage. Why did he insist that Spidey be single? Also, I agree with you about "wish-fulfillment" in SITC. But that's part of the point of all of this, isn't it? Even with Ironman? Different people have different wishes. Let a thousand flowers bloom.
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Men?
[Read the article: The saddest story ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]A thirteen year old? A fifteen year old? Can somebody, (Tracy?) explain to me the magic whereby displaying bad judgement makes one an adult? And if that magic exists, why didn't it transform the eleven year old girl into an adult, too? That's what the lady that said, "she knew what she was doing," seemed to be suggesting. I am confused about this, in a hurt, sarcastic sort of way. And, not understanding, it is hard for me to see how the posters who have lined up to treat those kids like garbage are more blessed with compassion and common sense than the 20 people who did that child. (Of course, those people could say, for the little it was worth, that the child consented to being done that way)
I know you all got hearts, but if you can only weep for one child at the expense of two or three others, maybe you should just skip it altogether.